In lesser hands, you could write it off as a gimmick: the bulbous saturation, distortion and intentional sabotage of what might be otherwise pleasant folk music. But easygoing has never been the aim of Low, a married Minnesota duo that from the get-go set out to upend their flowing compositions and gorgeous harmonies. When their quiet, dead-slow mid-nineties material stalled, they refined their sound, finding new ways to present a catalog of over a dozen albums, all of them worthy. 2018’s Double Negative marked their most drastic reinvention, with digital overload slicing through their songs like broken glass through butter. Its work-in-progress feel has been perfected on Hey What, with songwriting more assured, and their multitudinous sounds inseparable from the compositions themselves. Low’s finest hour, Hey What is a work of monstrous beauty. – Jeff McCord
Low – “Hey What”
Record Label: Sub Pop
Release Date: September 10, 2021
